The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #2 Batman
Best Movie: The Dark Knight Best Comic: Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Best Actors: Christian Bale In 1986, Frank Miller reimagined the then-campy superhero Batman as “The Dark Knight” in his revered graphic novel Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Later, through two standard-setting movies, Tim Burton’s original Batman and Christopher Nolan’s brilliant Batman Begins, we’ve been shown again the pathos-filled story of the burning rage that created the masked vigilante who strikes fear into the hearts of the criminals of Gotham. Often misunderstood by the very citizens and public officials he means to help, Batman follows his own... read more
Salute Your Shorts: Tim Burton's Short Films (Part 2, 1983-2010)
Salute Your Shorts is a weekly column that looks at short films, music videos, commercials or any other short form visual media that generally gets ignored.Last week, we took a look at Tim Burton’s early, pre-professional works, a combination of odd side projects and student films he worked on for the first twenty-four years of his life. But the success, relative though it may have been, of “Vincent” made Burton a professional director and led his career on a very different path than those of the rest of the animators at Disney. For reasons still somewhat unclear, Disney continued to... read more
Vincere Review
Release Date: March 19 Director/Writer: Marco Bellocchio Starring: Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Filippo Timi Cinematography: Daniele Ciprì Studio/Run Time: Offside, 128 mins. So I married a fascist dictator In its first act, Vincere is as an over-edited biopic about the rise of fire-bellowing orator Benito Mussolini. As the future dictator moves from broke rabblerouser to fascistic rhetorician, he marries Ida Dalser, who gives birth to their son. But as Mussolini’s ascent quickens, director Marco Bellocchio inverts all expectations and the film instead follows the downward trajectory of the scorned Dalser.... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #4 The Dude
Movie: The Big Lebowski Actor: Jeff Bridges If you truly loved your kidnapped trophy wife, would you really ask a guy like Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski to deliver ransom money to her captors? Sure, he’s got plenty of time on his hands—enough to while away the days chasing down a stolen rug, at least—but he can hardly get himself dressed in the morning, chugs White Russians like it’s his job (incidentally, he doesn’t have a real one) and hangs around with a bunch of emotionally unstable bowling enthusiasts. Any mission you set him off on seems bound to fail. And... read more
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Review
Release Date: March 19 Director: Niels Arden Oplev Writers: Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg (screenplay), Stieg Larsson (novel) Cinematographer: Jens Fischer and Eric Kress Starring: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace, Lena Endre, Peter Haber Studio/Run Time: Music Box Films, 152 mins. Noir sees the light This fittingly Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s posthumous Millenium Trilogy introduces us to Mikael Blomkvist, a disgraced journalist hired by a wealthy former industrialist to solve the murder of his great niece, a case that went cold 40 years ago. Blomkvist is assisted by hacker/investigator Lisbeth Salander, whose history of abuse adds weight to... read more
The Runaways Review
Director: Floria Sigismondi Writers: Floria Sigismondi Cinematographer: Benoît Debie Starring: Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, Michael Shannon, Stella Maeve, Tatum O’Neal Studio/Run Time: Apparition, 105 min. A motley crew, a cherry bomb Once upon a time, before The Go-Go’s lips were sealed, before the Bangles walked like an Egyptian, five schoolgirls and a Svengali record producer created an all-girl rock band called The Runaways—the title of this film about the band’s improbable rise and inevitable fall. While rock biopics can sometimes be an unwieldy beast, The Runaways is a strikingly honest look at a band that was much too young... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #5 Malcolm Reynolds
TV Show: Firefly Movie: Serenity Actor: Nathan Fillion When Joss Whedon created Malcolm Reynolds as the centerpiece of Firefly, he wanted a hero who is “everything that a hero is not.” Once a sergeant in the losing war for independence, Mal captains a team of misfits in smuggling operations on the edge of the galaxy. His main goal in life is to be left alone and avoid the Alliance government—until he discovers (in the movie Serenity), their heavy-handed plan to fix (i.e., medicate and subdue) the world, at which point he aims to misbehave. He’s broken, bitter and faithless. He’s... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #6 Han Solo
Movie: Star Wars triology Actor: Harrison Ford Smart, sarcastic and possessing of a certain cocksure charisma—Han Solo defines the maxim “shoot first, ask question later.” Only, when A New Hope was re-released in 1997, he didn’t shoot first in his iconic showdown with Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of series diehards. (They even started circulating fan-made t-shirts emblazoned with “HAN SHOT FIRST.”) That might seem like a bit of an overreaction, but think about it: Han Solo is the archetypal sci-fi antihero, whence all others came. Without his roguish... read more
Avatar Coming to DVD and Blu-ray on Earth Day
Fans can’t get enough of James Cameron’s insanely successful blockbuster, Avatar. But will they be as pleased with the special-effects 3-D stunner when they’re watching it in their living rooms? We’re about to find out. Avatar will be released on Blu-ray on April 22, which, not coincidentally, is Earth Day.... read more
Jason Segel Now Starring, Co-Producing and Co-Writing Muppets Movie
Jason Segel has signed on to star in Disney’s Muppets movie. The actor, who also happens to be one of Hollywood’s most well-known puppeteers (Remember the Dracula puppet musical at the end of Forgetting Sarah Marshall?), will play the film’s lead non-puppet role, according to The Hollywood Reporter. His as-yet-unnamed character is on a quest to round up the Muppets and reunite them.... read more
Michel Gondry and Björk Unveil...Scientific Musical?
After the news that Björk and Michel Gondry were teaming up again, we made some predictions as to what their new, “very undefined” project might be. Turns out, we were pretty wrong.... read more
Martin Scorsese Casts Sacha Baron Cohen in Kid's Movie
File this one under “Things We Didn’t See Coming.” Martin Scorsese, Paste‘s recently-crowned Best Living Director and master of goofiness, Sacha Baron Cohen, are teaming up for a kid’s movie. According to The Guardian, Scorsese is in talks with Baron Cohen to cast him in his upcoming adaptation of the children’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, which won the 2008 Caldecott Medal.... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #8 "Cool Hand" Luke Jackson
Movie: Cool Hand Luke Actor: Paul Newman “Cool Hand” Luke is a man of few words, and it’s that quiet determination that keeps him firmly rooted on his own path—no matter how beaten down or abused, he doesn’t waver. Though confined to a life of dirty, sweltering and seemingly endless labor at a prison camp run by a maniacal little man known only as Captain, Luke’s independent spirit remains strong. His refusal to submit to the prison’s hierarchy, both with the guards and the prisoners themselves, (he exerts every ounce of effort and then some in a futile boxing match... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #7 Tyler Durden
Movie: Fight Club Actor: Brad Pitt Tyler Durden is the badass that we all wish we could be, deep down. The badass who, when hit, mouths off so that he can be hit again. And again. The badass who simultaneously defies and creates rules while never, ever letting anyone walk all over him. He’s the kind of guy who can name something “Project Mayhem” and not get laughed at. Durden, in his own words, is “smart, capable and, most importantly…free, in all the ways you are not,” and yet, when he tells you that, it’s not insulting; you respect him... read more
The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights
Release Date: March 16 Director: Emmett Malloy Studio/Run Time: Warner Bros., 92 mins. Curious, all-encompassing minimalists celebrate 10th anniversary by traversing Canadian countryside Whenever Jack and Meg White make music in Under Great White Northern Lights (the new documentary about their 2007 Canadian tour), they’re a peppermint swirl of electricity—the culmination of decades of greasy blues and DIY punk; the American garage writ large. They’re the heirs apparent to everyone from Ledbelly to Bill Monroe to John Lee Hooker to the MC5, Led Zeppelin, the Flat Duo Jets and Nirvana.... read more
2 Faust 2 Furious: Script Excerpts From Michael Bay's $600 Million Adaptation of Dr. Faustus
What's the situation? It's bad. Real bad... read more
Titanic 3D: Coming to a Screen Near You in 2012
Just like the love of Titanic characters Jack and Rose, James Cameron movies never die. Cameron recently announced his intentions to re-release a director’s cut of Avatar this summer to give the new 3D box-office champ, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, a run for its (literal) money.... read more
Watch the Trailer to Sydney Pollack's Unreleased Aretha Franklin Documentary
The movie could be released as early as later this year... read more
Actor Peter Graves: 1926-2010
Peter Graves, best known for his role as Jim Phelps on the Mission: Impossible television series, died at his Los Angeles home on Sunday. He was 83.... read more
Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman to Switch Bodies in New Movie
What do you get when you cross The Hangover with Freaky Friday? Apparently, a forthcoming movie called The Change-Up, which casts Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman as best friends who switch bodies, according to Variety. Written by the same team behind The Hangover, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the film casts Bateman as a responsible parent while Reynolds plays a lazy bachelor.... read more
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